The little rubber feet on my HP laptop (Omnibook 6000) keep coming loose. I have tried contact cement, which seems to work for a few months, but they get a lot of lateral stress as the machine is moved.
Cyanoacrylate glues (Crazy Glue, etc.) work great for bonding rubber to rubber, rubber to steel or almost anything else. I would sand the surface of the rubber clean first. --- SJF
Throw them away, make new ones (snippets of mouse mat or wetsuit neoprene) that aren't already covered in glue residue. Then make them bigger, as this reduces the rolling and tearing action at the edge that tends to pull them off.
Then contact cement should work fine. Make sure it really is contact cement though - something like Evo-Stick 528 (neoprene in naptha), a cement that sets hard (if rubbery), not one that remains plasticised.
Clean the case too with a little acetone or isopropanol, to remove old glues.
Another option... "weatherstripping glue" or sometimes called "trim adhesive" sold in auto parts stores for attaching, oddly enough, weatherstripping to doors and plastic trip pieces to cars. Strong stuff...
If you have "glue remover" to hand, then use that first. Then try isopropanol, then methylated spirit (ethanol/methanol), then acetone. Then you're into solvents which will probably damage the paint on the case, so you need to work with a cotton bud on a stick, not a cloth.
I've had the same problem - I only have one rubber foot left, but I glued it on with Titebond Polyurethane (like Gorilla glue?) and it seems to be holding fine (tho it's only been a month). I used goo-gone, then ethanol on both surfaces first, and scratched them up and moistened them slightly, then clamped on the foot with the polyurethane glue.
Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions. I found some little silicon stick-on buttons at the hardware store. They are hemispheres about 3/8" in diameter. Works perfectly.
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